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Breaking: Morgan announces new business partnerships to train teachers in coding

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has announced the next wave of projects aimed at training teachers for the new computing curriculum.

Ms Morgan made the announcement at the Bett Show learning technology event in East London this morning, after an initial seven projects were launched last year.

She said business investment in the project would be matched with cash from a £3.5m fund created by the Department for Education (DfE) for teacher development, and that partners for the five new projects would include Google, BT and IBM.

Speaking exclusively to Schools Week following her speech, Ms Morgan said she had seen first-hand the success of the first round of projects, which were announced in June last year.

She said: “I’ve gone to schools up and down the country and we can see that already over 4 million children in our primary school system have been trained in terms of the new coding curriculum.

“But there are still teachers and school leaders saying ‘we’d like a bit more help, we need a bit more professional training, maybe a bit more confidence building’ and that’s what today’s announcement is about, it’s the next phase in making sure our computing curriculum is spread out in all schools across the country.”

Ms Morgan denied the government was doing schools’ work for them, adding: “My time as Education Secretary has shown that actually the most successful programmes are those which are done in partnership.

“If we want there to be a change, I think it’s right that we would work in partnership with schools and heads and teachers and bring in tech companies. That way, government can best add value, by bringing in these companies to make sure teachers have the confidence to deliver that curriculum.”

During her speech in east London’s Excel centre, Ms Morgan acknowledged the new computing curriculum had “added pressure onto teachers and schools who fear they may not have the skills to deliver it effectively”.

She said: “I am delighted to announce today a further partnership with some of the eading technology firms like O2, Google, BT, IBM and HP, collaborating with some of our best universities to train the next generation of computing teachers.

“Some of our top technology experts from these firms will be going into schools to train primary school teachers. New online resources will be made available to learn, and the DfE has agreed to match-fund all of the projects as part of our commitment to invest £3.5m to support schools with the new computing curriculum.”